By now you must be aware that smoking pot leads to “harder stuff”… Well, it naturally follows that the same is true for head shaving.Yes.Later this morning, Athena-the-Saucy will have one of her precious teeth extracted. Heck, why not lighten my load?Anybody want a kidney?This heart is pretty awesome too….

This is my stab at making light of something that I honestly feel pretty sucky about.And yet, there IS truth in that letting go of my hair did serve as a useful “warm-up” for this more permanent and tragic exercise in non-attachment.Naturally, as I type this, my mind leaps to the box of dust nestled in the carved wooden chest in the corner, formerly known as “my Ma”.The few gaping blackheads on her cheek that used to seduce and taunt me (I wish I had’ve asked her to squeeze them!)…. The hand(s) that poured forth the most perfect handwriting ever and clutched the steering wheel of her little red Mazda Protege, as she sped around The Village…. Dust.

And here’s little Athena Grace, breaking a sweat over a single, paltry tooth.But teeth are so meaningful.For most of my life, I have had recurring dreams (or shall I call them “nightmares”, because I certainly wake up with a pounding heart…) of losing my adult teeth…. and now they are real.Let’s just cut to the heart of it.I’m afraid I will be less lovable, lacking a tooth.Less attractive.Less….

But perhaps this is a secret recipe for Liberation with a capital L.Because if you possess any intelligence at all, you know those fears are exactly that.My body parts (or lack thereof) do not determine my worth.Deeeep breath.I’m honestly jazzed to finally not have a pus volcano living in my mouth anymore.(Plus, it’s on the bottom… so not quite as screaming as it would be if it was on the top.)I gave my best effort to healing the infection naturally:changing my diet, taking massive doses of vitamin c, taking a cocktail of the badass, fat soluble vitamin trio– A, D, K2, acupuncture and chinese herbs… But the damn tooth just wanted to come the fuck out.And seriously, releasing my hair was a gateway.I let it go, and I realized that I am still the same potent, regal essence of indestructible love that I always have been and always will be…. so take my fuckin tooth, bitches!!!In your face!!!!

Just don’t take anymore, ok?…… I’m only thirty seven years old for goddess sake.Let a woman enjoy her goddamn body parts for a while, willya???

Do you think I’d be a better writer if I didn’t allow myself to jump from topic to topic, like a strung out monkey in a bouncy house?But if I did exercise such discipline, I wouldn’t have gotten to birth that awesome sentence….And I think this world is already saturated with tidy, well-behaved, modestly contained essays, anyway.I’m here with you now, so I might as well make the best use of your illustrious and intoxicating attention.

As I was *devotionally* making my coffee this morning, my mind skidded gracefully into the groove of the pervasive patriarchal paradigm…. Explicitly, how most women take on their husbands’ last name.Often without even a question of like “why does this practice smell like dead, rotting fish?”….

Names are divinity, powerfully called into form.Women!?!?Why do you allow yourselves (and even aspire) to be called into form as your husband’s property?It’s a subtle relinquishment of your sovereignty, in the name of feeling secure, chosen, loved.Yes, I recognize that was a totally brash statement to make.But come ON.Let’s be done beating around the damn burning bush already!We are queens, selling ourselves into slavery!!!!But I suppose we are born into the chains of our fathers’ names, to begin with… so it seems like a welcome relief to flee to the initially erotic clutches of our husbands’ lineage.

It’s super fun to be so extreme and opinionated.Liberating, even.Being an empath, I used to try not to rub anyone too wrong…. because I took responsibility for their experience and feelings and I wanted everyone to like me.But I’m learning to have a damn backbone.I gave my energetically sensitive friend Chandra a mantra, recently.It goes, “That’s YOUR shit, bitch!”Haha, it’s totally funny BECAUSE it’s real.But as a writer, it’s a little different.I aim to say stuff that’s profoundly relevant to your journey…But I know this is relevant.I’ve gotta trust myself on this.My deep calling is to gloriously inhabit Woman in service to ALL WOMEN and this gorgeous, generous planet, Herself.

So just think about it.Why do you choose to become a limp rag doll who wears your man’s lineage… inadvertently abandoning your own?And when I say, “your own”, I’m not talking about your daddy’s.I mean your lineage as a Goddess.A Priestess.A magical, winged, enchantress, ever-rooted in the rhythmic, pulsing, oceanic infinity of LOVE.

I always felt burdened carrying my dad’s name.“Horwitz”.It never felt like the truth of me.More like an anvil I was tethered to.It took a goddess rooting in my womb to thrust me into the willingness to break a sweat and leap through the sprawling chain of bureaucratic hoops, and officially cut myself loose from that burdensome weight.Now, she and I are full fledged founding mothers of the Matriarchal Society of Graceland!!!!I feel great about that.Like I stood for my Self.And please spare me the arguement that my “True Self” is beyond name and form… and all that spiritually enlightened mumbo jumbo.Like, yeah, DUH.But I am here to inhabit this body and this world as the divine fullness that I AM.I am here to play the Game in Love’s name, and WIN.For the Team.That means mastering this rigorous curriculum of career and money and relationships and all the shit that spiritually inclined types are tempted to bypass.I’ve spent enough lives, enlightened on mountaintops.This is the championship round.

Late friday night, I was shocked awake by a hot, electric sting on my inner right forearm. It took my brain a minute to land back in the reality of my bed… but when I did, I realized something must have bit me. I flicked on red-bulbed bedside lamp and was horrified to discover a small black scorpion on my pink pillowcase! For real. Gingerly, I picked up my pillow and carried it to the bathroom sink, flicked the fierce little creature into the sink and ran the water until I was sure he was well on his way back to the Underworld. Crawling into bed again was terrifying, because I was sure that it must be teeming with feisty scorpions, whose sole aim was to take greedy bites out of me. But I was exhausted, so I braved the warm, cozy scorpion pit. I texted Ed, because I was rattled and needed immediate support. I also googled scorpion stings, and discovered, to my relief that there are more than fifteen hundred varieties of scorpions, and only twenty five of them are lethal. Somehow I knew that this little guy was more machismo than anything else. It took a while, but I fell back asleep and live happily ever after.

In the morning, it occurred to me that he might have been a humble Divine Messenger, so I googled “scorpion medicine”. Yes, he came with the message of death and rebirth; letting go of what is no longer serving. Just before I had fallen asleep, my heart was flooded with pain, and I had texted Ed, “You know you have caused a lot of pain”… referring to myself and his wife. He made no reply, and I drifted into slumber with those words reverberating in the underworld of my consciousness. Then I had been shocked awake by a sharp pain in my arm.

Realizing his sacred, selfless intent, I flooded with guilt that I had drowned him. He was only trying to get my attention, and confirm that indeed it was time to release all hope of happily ever after with Ed.

Well… that’s not quite accurate. I believe that Ed and I CAN live happily ever after… but not as husband and wife, Lady and Lord of Graceland. I PRAY that we can sustain our love and friendship…FOR SERENA. We will always be her parents. Deep down, I wanted an “Always Connection” with Ed, because the love we share is powerful and I never wanted to let it go. I pray from the depths of my soul that we may redefine happily ever after, in a way that suits the needs of the highest evolution of each of our souls.

But I’m sick of being smashed to pieces by disappointment. It’s been nearly four years of such obliterating sport. Now, a new calling is dawning in the deep, dark, Unmanifest within me. I am called to my Dharma. My sacred work in the World. And I must liberate the energy that has been tied up in the exhausting cycle of hope, longing and devastation. It’s weird. We have tried to “break through” more times than I have fingers and toes… but there has been this invisible forcefield that has kept us together. I guess God flipped the switch on this electric fence, because suddenly it is… almost easy. I say “almost”, just because I am still navigating that outrageously delicious grief cycle: anger and bargaining and blah blah blah. I sure know how to have a blast down here on Earth.

It’s ridiculous being a spiritually inclined person (to state it mildly), spilling with a wealth of wise and practical teachings… and yet…in some scorching moments, NONE OF THEM can lift me above the very remedial human slop of clutching my delusions. There is something gorgeous and refreshing about this. There is no escape hatch. I must brave the thorny, emotional underbrush and be humbled by the Journey that is mine to make.

This is so profound, that I will start a new paragraph, just to reiterate. This paragraph stands as a monument erected for the profundity of the sacred necessity to submit to one’s Life. It’s like when you’re out for a fabulous swim in the ocean… just frolicking like a carefree and even slightly cocky mermaid, and suddenly a huge wave pummels your azz, and all you can do is submit to the undertow, relax, and wait for it to deliver you to the surface again, according to its own, unified, mystic rhythm.

And therein lies the haunting and mystic face of death.

The ocean could easily take one’s Life (She DID swallow our Beloved Brian Baker…) Now I must forfeit the Life that the little me has been clutching. Trust me, I have held on as long as I possibly could (and I have the battle scars to prove it). This is the essence of spiritual awakening. But it is one thing to “know it”… and another thing to live it. Knowing is not enough. I want to be ground to holy fairy dust, that I may rise victorious rarefied, realized Light, and truly be of Service to this World. Of course there are other agendas that want to have a say… so I must not be glittery dust yet. Sigh. But I AM getting there! People, hear me when I testify that I am working so damn hard to figure out how to navigate this Life with Divine Intelligence. Toiling to discover when it’s right to surrender, and when to bleed and sweat and fight.

It’s such a ridiculous journey… knowing deep down that God’s Plan for my Life is fashioned from a pattern of infinitely intelligent LOVE… and that MY plan is only crafted from scrappy impressions of my past… God’s imagination is Unlimited and Wild and Ultimately Benevolent (yes, even and *especially* when, to the ego, it “hurts”). Mine is endearingly crippled.

I type these words with an aching heart, tears burning my eyes and gingerly streaming down my cheeks. My guiding light, Matt Kahn said that someone once asked him, “It seems like you feel good all the time”, to which he replied, “I feel LIFE all the time.” He said he has come to a sincere place Inside where no emotion is better or worse than another. It is all God. As a result of this sincere, awakened surrender, he no longer experiences highs and lows. He is a pure stream of healing Divine Love. So… Let me practice this wholehearted willingness to live as profound openness. God, if you want to caress your own Body of Infinity through me as this deep pool of sorrow, I offer myself completely. I boldly declare that there is ONLY LOVE, masquerading as every feeling and form and nuance of Life. And so I offer myself completely to be played by your Holy Music… whether I like it or not. I trust you God. And I offer myself to the Life you are Destined to Live through me. I am sure it will just keep getting more amazing and miraculous.

I used to want an “easy Life”. Not anymore. I want transformative Life that serves and inspires ALL HEARTS, and lifts the consciousness of the World.

I’ve been blessed with a stellar opportunity to write six *paid!* articles on motherhood, for a chiropractor friend’s website. I’ve written four so far, and I have been very satisfied with them. But then Serena turned four months alive, and suddenly my brain has gone missing! The fifth one was gonna be about the immense potential of raising a girl, given all that I have gone through on my journey, and can now offer to her as profound empowerment. And how this empowerment can ultimately heal and transform the world in the way of LOVE. I am so ignited by this “sermon”… but somehow, despite the well of passion pressing on my heart from inside, I am failing hard! I have written it FOUR times. Each flush contains exquisite gems… but… I feel like I am trying to decant the Ocean in a flimsy crystal champagne flute, which is a massive endeavor… and then my little Buddha-fairy calls to me from the bedroom and my concentration on this task is decimated. My mind is a freshly shattered mirror, and when you try to behold your own face within it, you have a thousand eyes and a hundred and eight gaping, perplexed mouths. Which might be interesting for a second, but ultimately, you need a soft, linguistic sanctuary for your mind to rest after bushwhacking through the underbrush of popular culture and wifi signals, concrete and an overpopulation of stiff right angles! On one hand, it’s wildly frustrating… but it’s also pretty fascinating. It’s a new experience for me to feel so clumsy with words and ideas.

So Athena Graceland is once again my hallelujah-refugee camp. A place where I don’t have to make sense, or sound erudite and literarily competent. (Although I often do…just by accident! 😉 The only requirement here in this psychedelic wilderness, is to BE ME, which thankfully, I can still muster, even as the mother of a four and a half month alive baby saint. You think I’m kidding… I’m not. I’m pretty sure all baby saints behaved as Serena does… with so much grace and patience, effulgent joy and serenity. Yep, Saint Serena is super rad and I’m marinating in thanksgiving. But this doesn’t make the job of caring for her any less labor intensive. God, my body feels suddenly OLD! Creaky and sore and weatherbeaten. Is this why women are supposed to have babies at twenty, rather than thirty six?? Or is it just because I am doing it 98% alone, while earning a meager living doing physically demanding jobs, such as cooking and cleaning, which a) takes it’s toll, and b) doesn’t leave me excess cash flow to fund such replenishing activities as massage, yoga classes, luxurious laps at the local pool…. I still have hope for these things and more. They would do me oodles of good.

I wish I was bringing in plentiful dollars via the use of my incredible mind and courageous, infinitely loving heart, versus my poor tin-woods-woman body, which has hopelessly misplaced the oil can right about now. I have so many gifts and talents of the heart and mind… but I just haven’t quite figured out how to “monetize them”… and honestly, writing that made me puke in my mouth, because I still feel grossed out that I should have to monetize my love. I just want it to happen for me like it happened for my all-time-hero, Matt Kahn. He totally “seeked ye first the kingdom of Heaven”…. and all else was added unto him. He didn’t sit around strategizing who his target audience of wounded SUCKAS was, and how to seduce their imagined weakness. He tended the garden of his heart with steadfast, meticulous passion and suddenly… POOF!!! Life demanded that he share all that he found with those who were hungry to Remember. That’s the only way life makes sense to me. I will just keep stepping deeper into LOVE… and my life will become what it must, as I die to myself and am ever re-born into the heart of Infinity. I just can’t stomach all that marketing bullshit. It’s basically feeding off of peoples’ culturally conditioned myths of brokenness, and capitalizing on it!!!! That’s not okay with me. I’d rather make them soup in my Shakti Pot, and just get by….

But I know there’s another way. I know there’s a way for us all to thrive by communing in our Infinite Light… Celebrating our unique, masterful divinity….

In the mean time, I am chopping the shit out of wood and carrying the F out of water.

And I am mostly hella happy. My body is just a bit stressed. And I am feeling stretched. And as aforementioned, my mind is curiously shattered… at least when I put pressure on myself to make sense… cuz this makes sense, right? It makes perfect sense to ME…

Saint Serena the Benevolent is really allowing me to get into it this morning!!!… which is another ridiculous irony. When I’m trying to write my articles, she wakes up before I can pull my mind together into a unified field of genius… But when I’m writing for my own cosmic shits and giggles, she snoozes away like Sleeping Beauty! But I’m just watching the whole insane play unfold… and laughing about it all. Even when I cry. Like yesterday evening…

I had just led sadhana… (The two hours a week that I exist as Athena Grace… Not “Serena’s Mama”.) I was walking along the red dirt path back to my car, who I named “Faith”, but my Ma insists on calling “Hakim”, because the license plate says HKM!!!!! That woman amazes me in the best way… Because her gratuitous rebellion simultaneously PISSES ME OFF and CRACKS ME UP. Like, Mom, can’t you just call the damn car Faith, already??? And also, don’t stop calling her Hakim, because it strikes up a symphony of funny bones in me, that ONLY my Ma is able to….

But, so, (yes, I know it’s not traditionally “literarily masterful” to start a sentence with “But, so,”… but it felt like the appropriate beginning, so I went with it.) the evening is IN-TOX-I-CATING. It’s not quite twilight…. But the world is beginning to blush in cool, ultra lucid tones. Flocks of regal pine trees sweep the deepening sky, and the air feels like womb-esque perfection– neither warm nor cold, just deliciously alive. This unsayable beauty suddenly reminds me of a poem written by my deceased friend and lover Dan… Something about realizing the meaninglessness of all that he once feverishly chased… uniting with the Truth of Existence– to bear ecstatic witness to the Light that fills the world each new day.

I start to feel the Dan shaped hole in my heart, tears sting my eyes, and I release myself into the heart of the emotion, like a white dove, tossed into the air, suddenly liberated in the invisible currents of space. I reflect on the amazing conversations we shared over amazing food and wine, long, meandering walks on blessed beaches, through holy woods and vibrant green scapes of scintillating springtime. And also the ways that he annoyed me– sometimes talking for days, as though he’d never been listened to in his whole life, which flooded me with a helpless feeling of energetically drowning in seemingly endless and desperate garlands of (beauty-full) words, worlds, stories. This twisty, frivolous wander backward caused me to muse… what WAS it about Dan???…. that compelled me with such immensity…? His HEART, the immediate knowing flooded in. His heart was the softest, most gentle, wise, generous compassionate space in all Creation. Resting in its sanctuary was like being swaddled in chinchilla fur. I could cry now, just thinking of his heart. And his voice reflected it perfectly. So soft, soothing, gentle. Ok, now I am officially crying. And his hands…. perfect extensions of his wide, infinite heart. They spilled with healing love. They touched to the core, without even trying.

Then I thought about all the hearts that I get to commune with every day of my life…. Legendary hearts. And I’m not exaggerating. My Ma. Ed. Serena. Ken. Dara. Deirdre. Karuna. Gosh, it’s stupid to list them, because the list would never end. I am lucid dreaming in an explosive eternal spring garden of glorious hearts. My life is a stream of holy communion (sometimes playfully concealed by silly “problems”, misgivings and futile hopes…)

I am laughing at the one who used to believe that spiritual awakening would be like getting high… Like if I “meditated hard enough”, my third eye would explode into a psychedelic fractal of kaleidoscopic lights, and my body would rush and dissolve in tingling ecstasy. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that would be pretty damn cool… But I’m not renouncing my miraculously mundane existence in this Garden of Hearts, in order to stalk that fleeting, unsustainable “peak experience”. I remember when I heard the spiritual AllStar, Wayne Dyer say, “Man must chop wood and carry water”… I was like hella bummed. I secretly hoped he might be wrong. Chopping wood and carrying water seemed a prison sentence to me.

But here I am, chopping the shit out of wood and carrying the F out of water….

And feeling more sustained, mellow ecstasy, contentment and peace than I ever imagined I could.

And maybe SOMEday, somehow, I will find myself delightfully inhabiting a version of my perfectly blessed life, where I am abundantly sustained by the gifts of my heart and mind, as I blissfully serve the bursting hearts of Humanity. That would be so awesome.

Thanks to FaceBook’s new feature, “Memories”, I have recently been revisiting my blogs from twenty eleven. Five years ago. I am struck by the audaciousness with which I expose myself. Every time I read an entry, I fall to my heart’s knees in empathic reverence for the rugged terrain of both Heart and Life (these two dimensions tend to hopelessly bleed together into a vast, sloshy, ecstatic mess) that I not only was willing to traverse, but also to share with such generous abandon. I feel a sense of awe for what I have survived, where I have arrived… and the whispers that rise up in me and hint of the horizons and summits I will yet Realize. Over the past few years, I have become a bit more conservative in my sharing. Because I’m afraid of saying things that will upset others. Especially Ed, I s’pose. Self-imposed censorship is one of the most unwieldy demons to contend with as a writer. Because if a writer is not ripping the “Jesus bandaid” off, and being outrageously naked… well… she’s just another homogenized, factory farmed, word squanderer.

Watch me, as I shove my lovably cowering self back out under the lonesome, prismatic floodlight of center stage… Reluctant, heroic, naked… A beacon in an otherwise blackened domain… cradling my own majestic, pulpy heart in my cupped hands.

Yes, my heart. Somehow it found its way under the wheels of a big rig this past week. Thank GOD I invested the model with the lifetime warranty, way back when.

Serena will be three months alive, two days from now. And so far, since her arrival, most of my writings have been high notes. Can you blame me? What could be a higher note than the blessing of finally having an excruciatingly essential prayer answered in technicolor surround sound? I knew from the the tootsie roll center of my very own address in Infinity that it was my calling to bring a daughter into the world and give my all to assure that she hit the ground DANCING, as she lives out her star-child soul mission… But I did NOT know the holy implications of this sublime calling. Serena is the joy of my life. So naturally, I have been exploring these new dimensions of ecstasy on the page.

I thought I was done suffering about her dad, Ed. The married policeman (hilarious, huh?) who somehow stole into the farthest, deepest and tenderest neighborhoods of my heart. (As if there are any neighborhoods in Here that are not all that…) But there’s something about him… That I really… like? Love? Need? Prefer? Yes, all of that…

We’ve known each other for nearly four years now. And have been fervently clutching the feeble, rapid-thrashed life-raft of our devoted dream of being together for a solid three. But Ed’s always been explicitly committed to keeping his family together until his youngest sun graduates from high school. Ha! Talk about a scenic tour through the land of breathing cliches! It’s the new Disneyland river ride!… Not purported to be scary… The colorful boats are structurally sound, and meander along a questionably grimy little manmade stream. You pass through dim caverns, entering a series of romantic scenes: a big, solid man and a swooning firecracker of a goddess sharing perfectly delicious moments of electric love-infused adventures… soaking in naked embrace at Harbin Hot Springs, sitting as close as two people can be, at the perfectly dim bar of Pizzaiolo, sipping red wine and sharing succulent smooches, grilling steak on the springtime rooftop of Athena’s beloved Lake Merritt apartment, laying entwined on a blanket on a sunny, wave-slapped beach…. And yet, somehow, all of this candied delight evokes bleeding and screams, as the gentle river carries One merrily along.

God I amuse myself. I could get perpetually lost in the luxurious, rolling landscapes of memory as simultaneously revealed and concealed by worlds of words… But I came here to expose myself. I came here to tell you that I thought I was finally free from the sprawling sentence of strenuous heartache that is being in unrelenting love with this married man. He gave me a daughter because that is what I wanted more than anything. And maybe he wanted to be the One, because it would mean fusing an undeniable bond for this life and perhaps beyond. I wanted that with HIM. Don’t ask me why… Hearts do not speak the language of reason. And I hesitate to use the “K word” (karma), because it is too easy. The spiritually persuaded, imaginatively lazy tend to castrate Life’s greatest Mysteries, by rampantly slapping that label on every nuanced curve of Existence, and sleepwalking on with glassy, passive eyes. It might be accurate… but alas, I wishn’t to suffocate the fluttering, fragile immensity of the Unknown through which we swim.

How on earth am I going to deliver myself back to the original track of this well-intentioned telling??? As I stated back in paragraph four, Serena is on the precipice of three months alive now. Ed has still not been here to see us. He was there for her birth… A solid pillar of masculine strength and love. And in the hospital, he vowed to come visit within the next few weeks. But it was the holy-days, and there were already others at his job who had put in for time off… Hence, his supervisor would not bless him to take leave. And there I was, a new mother, hormone cocktail sloshing, tears splashing, as the rug is pulled out from beneath my feet. Multiple times, the promise of his presence rebuked at the last minute. All too familiar, it reeks of daddy’s dutiful defacing of my innocent, hope-full heart.

But meanwhile, every day, Serena awakes with a smile that radiates unsayable purity. And her brightness calls me home to the holy mOMent at hand. And all day long, she needs me, and she feeds me with her vulnerable presence and unobstructed soul music… Like I said, I thought I was free from needing Ed. But a few weeks ago, he put in for time off (again), and his supervisor gave him a radiant, green light. It shone all the way from Berkeley to Nevada City, lighting up my Temple of Hope with turquoise glowing shadow play of days shared as a momentarily cohesive, loving family. But shadows, when grasped, just slip like whispers through closed, empty fists.

His boss rebuked his word. Twice more. Meanwhile it was Ed’s birthday. And he was far away in almost every sense of the word. Then came his thirty three year anniversary with his wife… God, looking backward on the last couple of weeks, I can’t pinpoint the address of the monster who hijacked and vandalized my heart… But I can testify of disturbingly familiar feelings of disappointment, betrayal and aloneness. Meanwhile, Serena continued to blind me with her lucid, angelic BEing. And for this glaring paradox, my heart washed with inadvertent sprays of guilt. I shouldn’t ache like this, while holding her to my nectar-gushing breast.

Gosh, the trouble with my passion for colorful, poetic expression, is that it is nearly impossible to venture from point A to point B. Is that a problem? The world is already “Pointy” enough as it is… but… sometimes I want to record my life for posterity’s sake… and I get so dazzled by the scenery along the Way… Feels like navigating a sprawling sea of scintillating sirens.

What must I fuse onto this page for eternal safe keeping? I want to tell you that the way my heart breaks in love with Ed feels like dying a thousand times over. Each time is new. Each time is familiar. Each time I am more masterful at the Art of Death. I have come to wonder of the hidden Gifts of these flash-crucifixions… Is the pain essential? Or is it a result of my stubborn grasp on that which could never be mine? But I will not let go of him. Nor he of me… although in many broken mOMents, he has offered to “set me free”. But I suppose the Freedom I truly seek, can only be realized from behind these bars I have erected in my own heart. Do you understand? It reminds me of a book that my old friend and “tantric lover”, Jay had on his nightstand, once upon a time… “The Only Way Out Is IN”.

I will not find the freedom I seek through manipulating circumstances. Only through breaking until there is nothing left to break… Until all that is left is the pure and unconditional love rushing endlessly from my own whole and Holy heart. Flowing unobstructed from Everywhere to Nowhere and Beyond. I will break as many times as this takes. And I will do it holding Ed’s invisible hand… Because my heart demands this. And I will sing the preposterous stories of my life upon the page… because they dazzle, enchant and endlessly perplex me. And I these stories will deliver me…

As I mentioned recently, I am happier than I’ve ever been in my life. This is truly triumphant, because I am one who has invested a hefty chunk of my life in the coin of getting down, dirty and destroyed by darkness, depression, despair. Too many a day of my thirtieth year, I shook my fist at God, beseeching this Force of Almighty Love, “I have always turned toward You… WHY have you left me to marinate in this dense puddle of ache and confusion???” And as was the way, when I cried out to God, I was met with that cursed, spacious aloneness, which was never any consolation to my desperate, bleeding heart. I may never stop wondering WHY we must live all that we must live. And trust me, WE MUST LIVE IT. Or else we wouldn’t live it.

As I look backward, through the unflattering, though honest lens of my nearly eternal Dark Night of the Soul, what I realize, is that through this rigorous course of study, I was able to evolve from a state of numbness in the face of divine duress, to a gorgeous, tantric willingness to feel it all, to embrace the sensational aliveness, the creatively textured lila of my holy existence. This skill of unconditional embodiment did *not* come easy. It came hard earned, after thirty some odd years of reticent practice, including, but not limited to an eating disorder in my late teens and early twenties. Compulsive eating. Compulsion– A strong, usually irresistible impulse to perform an act, especially one that is irrational or contrary to one’s will. So you see, compulsion, by nature, implies that I really had no idea why the fuck I was doing what I was doing, while I was doing it. But in retrospect, it became obvious that it was to shut down my feelings. What feelings was I shutting down? Honestly, I have retired from the arduous vocation of inspecting my past under a high power microscope…but I do know that I hovered somewhere between a few feet and a few miles off the ground, until I was about thirty years old. And even then, I was not fully committed to inhabiting the treacheries of this unforgiving earth plane. Geesh, that last sentence portrayed this planet to be some sort of inhospitable hell… Is the earth plane truly “unforgiving”? I’d say that WE are the bringers of forgiveness, in the face of all that it is to be here… And the choice to show up at this cacophonous pot-luck with such a savory, nutrient-dense dish as forgiveness, is a true sign of spiritual maturity.

I love how I began this piece by asserting that I am happier than I’ve ever been, and my surrendered fingers led us into the throes of a shadowy and dismal past… I guess it’s sorta like proudly displaying my battle scars to you, as I stand, exposed and beaming with pride and Heavenly Light. I want you to know that no matter where you are on the Ride of Your Life, it is the explicitly perfect place to BE. This is a massive motivation in writing to you! What good is my journey, if not to share it with you, in service of building a bridge of perfection from here to illusory “there”… The “there” of fulfillment, peace and unconditional joy… We Love Warriors are armed with bottomless willingness and perfect faith, as we navigate the labyrinths of all that we must live.

And now back to the dawn of this grounded, steady, gentle song of happiness, gaily playing through my heart and life. It was born with Serena. Though I was not aware of its modest, unobtrusive presence at first, because I was otherwise occupied, contending with acute hormonal fluctuations, reorganizing organs, and the shock of suddenly inhabiting a totally new life, in a totally new place, with a totally new, totally dependent, and totally teensy person. But praise the Lord, that didn’t last long. In the Grand Scheme, that is. Really, what’s a few weeks? It’s but a skillfully skipped stone across the placid surface of an alpine lake. And now that smooth, flat stone has sunk and settled in wet oblivion, and I am here, smoldering with hard-earned and sustainable delight.

During my pregnancy, and earliest days of motherhood, I fought a long and exhausting battle with the demons of fear and self-doubt. Living every day, with this vicious, whispering question, smeared all about the walls of my mind– How on earth would I raise my daughter AND earn enough money to sustain us both??? Actually, I’m still not a hundred and eight percent sure of The Answer… but what has shifted is my belief in my Self. During the heat of battle, I remember thinking, “I have come to trust God and Grace and Galactic Beneficence… They always reveal the perfect door to walk through, opportunity to seize. But my will felt weak. Would I walk through the door, if it meant sweating, or feeling a burn?

But Hail Mary Full of Grace, childbirth restructured my relationship with sweating and burning! They have become mere child’s play. Doors are pouring forth like scarves from a magician’s palm. And I have seen myself courageously step through them, tasted the quenching satisfaction of saying yes, and doing the necessary work, with my daughter strapped to me, or suckling my breast all the while. Like a treasure-laden pirate ship, washed up on my beachfront property, my will and strength have mystically emerged, and I am mostly confident, and wholly victorious.

I began this piece with the effusive desire to tell you how amazing my daughter is, and how being a mother somehow completes me… which I feel cautious admitting, since over the course of my life, I’ve heard people tout the notion that one oughtn’t lose herself in motherhood, because it’s not healthy or balanced. But I wonder what is the difference between GIVING myself wholeheartedly to motherhood, and “losing myself” in motherhood? Honestly, I don’t care, because my current experience is authentic and sourced by a massive love. And Serena deserves ALL OF ME, my passion, delight and devotion.

My favorite definition of the ever-elusive word, tantra, is “to weave”. By tantra, I mean the spiritual path of embracing all that it is to BE HERE; perpetually diving IN and THROUGH. Transcendence through intimacy with, rather than avoidance of… And in this immaculately woven tapestry of existence, giving myself wholeheartedly to motherhood also means giving myself wholeheartedly to my Life. Emerging in this vital role has incited an arousal of deep knowing and trust in my artistic gift as a writer, and a newly ignited passion to claim my essential place in this world, and share what bursts at my seams, in the name of Service and Salvation. Just like pulling a stray thread in a sweater, it all comes unraveled… if you tugged with any conviction at the thread of my impassioned motherhood, you would suddenly find yourself holding a long strand of unified power, purpose, passion, pleasure, play… And if you continued to unravel this intricate and sacred weave, you would be standing alone at the edge of emptiness, holding the infinite thread of Creation in your trembling hand.

Every morning, I wake at five am, into this saturated sense of purposeful eagerness. I feel Serena’s warmth beside me. I listen for a few fleeting, hallowed moments to her softly dancing breath, before delicately exiting the bed we share, and making my way to the kitchen to fill my red, whistling kettle with enough water to make a cup of coffee. Drip by drip, I pour the perfect cup, and sip by sip, I pour my unbridled heart and mind and life across the page so that YOU may remember your Self. So that your courage may emerge to say YES to the incessant whispers of your soul. So that you may love all that you have lived, and live all that you love.

Around six thirty, a soft festival of coos and grunts emerge from the still dark bedroom. Serena is so graciously alerting me of her readiness to share another blessed day together upon this earth. I finish up the sentence that is lingering in my tingly, singing fingers, and then make my way to the bedroom to scoop up my well-rested, perpetually joyful, Tiny Goddess. Every day, I am again astonished by her exquisite, soulful beauty, and fresh, tender perfection. I’m serious. There is poetic license, and then there is straight up honesty. I cradle her portable little body in my arms, and study her face, bearing riveted witness, as she lands back in this lucid, waking dream, after a long, luxurious night of rendezvousing with the Luminous Lords and Ladies of that Lighter dimension of heaven… you know, the one most of us wistfully pine for as we trudge across the rigorous scapes of grace we must face to know this *temporary*, denser heavenly hOMe.

Haha, listen to THIS– I just took a little break from writing, to change Serena’s diaper, bring some more firewood inside before it got too soaked by the rain, make some tea… And all this talk of heaven roused Eric Clapton’s song to rise to the surface of my mind. You know, the one he wrote after his sun died… I started singing it to Serena. “Would you know my name, if I saw you in Heaven…” Such a lovely melody… I was compelled to find it on Youtube and play it for us. I did, and began to give my all to singing along with the tender-hearted angel, Mister Clapton. But I didn’t even make it through the first verse, before I burst into tears, my choked up voice turning to quaver and strain. I feel weird crying like that in front of my girl… “On paper”, I strive to model healthy emotional expression, still some part of me wants to hold on… fearing that it might frighten her, or stress her out… But even so, I let go; let my heart break open at the notion of losing my child, and serenading her as she flies back to the Other Side. I explained to my perfectly alert, gurgling daughter through tears, what the song was about. She gazed at me with unfiltered light spilling from her eyes. All these little, frivolous moments… strung in garlands like cranberries and popcorn… adorning the spiraling mind of God. This is the gift we each live. And it’s easy to miss, if we are caught in that wretched trap of striving…

But back to the urgent matter of my testimony of grounded joy. Serena is a slow motion shooting starburst of smiles and indecipherable, enlightened baby music. How could I NOT be a purring stream of ecstasy? Well, I’ll TELL you how– and actually, this confession will smoothly unify the round-about route I took to get to this very sentence I am typing– all of that afore mentioned darkness that I faced, befriended and transmuted… I am certain that living through all of that with patience and presence and faith, has carved this wide-open, sacred space, in which I can fully taste and savor the slow-paced, earthy delight of motherhood. I’m so glad I waited till I was on the brink of thirty six trips around the sun to become Mother. My nervous system has unraveled substantially. And being with a baby is a mellow, crawling roll. It would be hard to inhabit the center of it if I was wound tight and yanking at my own leash.

It was a gratifying surprise that bringing Serena into the world would deliver me so deeply into the crystalized center of my impassioned gifts. This miraculous synthesis is the sober source of my happiness. A particularly wild, passionate and visionary soul brother, Damien, used to say, “Your dreams are waiting for you to come true.” Indeed they were… but their days of waiting are done. Athena Grace has Risen. And will rise a thousand times more. And then, rise again… Because, my friends, there really IS no end to this exquisite trip of Love exploratorily caressing its own infinite body.

Well… I FINALLY made it!!! You know… to the land of milk and honey!!! That sweet, creamy epicenter of creation, where there is no resistance… to life… Grin. Will I be able to stay in this inner paradise? Or will my unabashed telling it on a mountain knock me back on my sparse little fairy ass? Shrug. My hypothesis is that life will keep grinding me into exquisite diamond dust… and sometimes I’ll enjoy it more than others… but for the most part, I have retired from beating myself up, and measuring myself against that despicable pile of beyond the sky spiritual standards.

This is mostly thanks to Matt Kahn. (check him out on youtube or truedivinenature.com. seriously.) People, I’m telling you… this dude is the sanest of the sane among us!!! He has reminded me that I can take an EPIC shortcut to everything that I have ever wanted, just by loving my own heart. Yes. Like physically putting my sentient, slender, E.T. hands over that warm, pulsing center of the universe, and saying aloud, “I LOVE YOU,” as I feel it reverberate like music through the land beneath my sternum. As many times as I can stand it… and then a baker’s dozen more… at least. Because like… the time has come to stop being a beggar, pleading for others to give me that which I refuse to give myself. Insanity at its finest!…

In response to EVERYTHING that arises… I LOVE YOU. I love you… I love you. Try it! I DARE YOU.

So I’ve found the gleaming, antique key to the Pearly Gates of the Queendom of Heaven. Now what? Like Jack Kornfield said, “after ecstasy, the laundry”. Yep. I’m still here at the Momshram, aka Ananda Village. Early last week, I was shopping in “Master’s Market” and the woman who rang me up asked me if I was “looking for a job”. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was… but when I gave it some thought… I realized that I just might be, after all!!!! She said they needed a new produce manager. Twenty hours a week. Someone to love on the veggies and fruities. I felt kinda excited. It was one of those cases of MC Omniscience on the mic, singing out divine order loud and clear. So I leaned into the invitation and the next thing I knew, I was unloading a truck of organic veggies and blinking with astonishment at the light speed progression of my unfolding!

Actually, I panicked. Like what in the heck had I just committed to??? What were the implications of saying YES to this opportunity? Suddenly I was married to a life inside of this conservative, rigorous spiritual utopia in the middle of the woods, to which I do not officially belong… nor aspire to belong, to be honest.

Yeah, lemme interject a word about that- This place is medicine. Many people come here to heal. Whatever it is they have to heal… Myself included. Over the past year and some months, I have become unrecognizable to myself. I have given up alcohol and pot and the excessive stimulation of urban existence. I have been emerging as a teacher and a leader; one who courageously lives what she knows in her heart, without holding back. But not in an ostentatious way… just inhabiting a quiet faith in the all-pervading power of love. Gosh, I suppose that’s nothing new for me… But just updating my systems, and purging some seriously heavy, useless junk.

That said, I’m certainly as flawed as the rest of you suckas!!! I still act like a jerk sometimes. Especially to the people who matter most to me. And I still shook in my hip and versatile, water-resistant boots after I committed to being the Produce Goddess at Master’s Market. I told the manager (multiple times) that I wasn’t sure that the job was for me… that he should keep looking for someone “permanent” (whatever THAT is!), but I would GIVE MY BEST while I was there. He looked into and straight through me and with an omniscient smirk, said, “That’s perfect. That’s all I ask.”

And then I was free. Not locked into living out a begraggled eternity at Ananda Village, doing a part-time, minimum-wage job… but just free… to fully inhabit THE MOMENT. Giving my heart and my sweat to the task at hand, and the people who grace my presence. It’s been like a week and a half. And I am surprised by how much I love it. It feels like family there. A family of bright lights, under-cover agents of LOVE. It’s kind and peaceful and SHRI. My life feels balanced and blessed.

Oh, I forgot to tell you the most significant piece!!! Ahem. So I am practicing trusting my HEART to guide my life, right? I am. And it tells me what to do. Sometimes. And then sometimes there are spans of great quiet. Where I guess I am just meant to BE in life for a while… But She told me to take this job. And AHHHHHHHH my ego went BERZERK!!!! It was like freaking out because it didn’t understand what I had just done!!! It didn’t seem to jive with all the plans that it had made… For me to have a baby… and lead the LOVE REVOLUTION… and be a leader of women and a wealthy spiritual teacher with my own hOMe… and… on and on. (which is mostly all happening through me anyway, but that’s beside the point.)

All I knew is that I was told to say YES.

PEOPLE… I’m telling you… this kind of engaged, surrendered willingness is a serious exercise in TRUST. A divinely ordained test I passed by a baby angel’s hair!!!! (there’s no such thing as failure, buy the way!) All I know is that life is NOT what we think… It’s this miraculous trust walk through perpetually blossoming gardens of endless magnificence that we can only recognize when we stop thinking we know how it should go and projecting into the illusory future… just simply relax as the current of divine grace carries us along this riveting river of predestined “surprises”, which are ALL conspiring to unfold us as ever-perfect expressions of LOVE in motion.

Are you ready to REMEMBER?

“The party starts here,” she said with a coy smile, pointing with gentle confidence to her blazing heart.

I have been marveling lately at how dramatically my dreams are morphing. Two entries ago, I was pining for a hOMe, and motherhood and the ideal partnership… And today, I am remarkably content with the current ISness of my existence. I am back at Ananda Village, living with my Ma, teaching yoga here, facilitating a women’s video circle, and continuing to ROCK my inner world as I shed hereditary darkness and allow the light to pour through. Layers of delusion keep sloughing off, and I realize that I am becoming lighter and happier by the second.

At the epicenter of this transformation, is the remembrance that I am alive for humanity. And for LOVE… When I imagined that I was alive to satisfy my ego, I felt mostly fucked in the ass by my very existence. Like it was never enough. I was perpetually empty. But now purifying my heart and opening myself to be a Source of Love is the place that I return throughout my day. And it just makes sense. Am I proclaiming to be all holier than Thou, like I’m some damn Master? No! Because the REAL activism is loving myself for who and how I am now, today… The one who aspires from the depths of her being. The one who sometimes *seems* to fall short. The one who keeps going. The one who boldly declares her love to the world… perhaps imperfectly… but also with courage and boldness.

Yeah! I’m here to wrap those stifling spiritual ISMs and dogmas and nutritionally void protocols in a dingy though grand olde flag, and send them down the wild, swollen river, once and for all. If you’re still using spirituality to find fault in yourself as you ARE, to imagine a grand chasm between yourself and God, I’m here to tell you that is a dead paradigm! It’s time to live what you know in your heart, to own that God is not a big, stern man who lives beyond the sky… but the miraculous Allness, experiencing itself as YOU and me and everyone and everything right NOW. And this is whole, complete and perfect, and is a cause to love like there ain’t no tomorrow!!!!

So what do I desire, from this place of radical completeness? My biggest desire at this time, is to completely embody the light of spirit. To obliterate shame and conditioning and the inherited wounds of my ancestors… and let the light of the Infinite Blaze through every cell and pore and fiber of my magnificent Heavenly Body!!! It seems like the dominant paradigm has been a body and spirit split… like we’ve collectively been through so much shit. So much pain and suffering, that we’ve imagined the body to be an unsafe hOMe, wrought with land mines of stored trauma, preferring instead to live in the intrepid sprawling landscapes of the mind, where we can fabricate fever dreams of our own “safety” without having to feel through the sensations that we once upon a time, associated with unbearable pain and terror.

I want to inhabit my body as I have never inhabited it before. I want to inhabit my sexuality free from shame, as nothing short of a glorious portal straight into the heart of Heaven. This is not an indulgent want, but an essential reclaiming of the truth of who I AM. I know that being a living embodiment of pure truth and light is the epicenter of all other dreams and desires that sing through me. If my desires are a multi tiered fountain, this radical return of infinite spirit into my body is the WATER. It will naturally pour forth and nourish all the slumbering seeds of my destiny with ease and grace. No more inner wars and parental punishment to manipulate myself into PRODUCING content that will desperately imbue my life and my very being with a false sense of worth that will temporarily convince me I am “okay”, in the face of the constant low-level dread that I’m NOT. Ever.

Love will make this so. Every day, every breath, I return to love. I fill my own heart with the grace of the infinite. I breathe all the way to the bottom of my belly, into my yoni, and feeeeel all there is to feel. I allow myself to relax. To soften. And from this place of unrelenting care, attention, and embodied surrender, I will continue to shed and reveal and attract the perfect people and situations and opportunities to facilitate this profound resurrection of the radiant light of my spirit into the sacred temple of my body. (Which naturally will blaze out into the world and raise YOU up in the light of embodied Truth…)